The implications of the news that girls have surpassed boys in reading -- at every grade level, in all fifty states -- and that girls are graduating high school and college with better grades and in larger numbers have not been fully absorbed by parents of boys.

I read picture books with only central female characters, I insisted she wrestle her big brothers, demanded family call her words like smart and brave as much as cute and adorable. I tell her we are all different -- straight and thin to round and plump and millions of ways in between. I tell her it's what makes us all beautiful. Unconvinced.